


under its weight

by sophiecognito



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Specific Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), The Sorrow of Werlyt Questline (Final Fantasy XIV) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29392740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiecognito/pseuds/sophiecognito
Summary: After the Emerald Weapon is put down, it dredges up memories for both Gaius and the Warrior of Light. They don't quite match in intention.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	under its weight

Like so many before the Warrior of Light, the Emerald Weapon crashes to the ground, defeated. The Black Wolf shimmering in gold dissipates like an ill-formed mirage. And Rex is no more. 

There’s not much left of him due to Oversoul, the liquid leaking out too bright to be blood. Gaius wonders if he knew the data he would be inundated with was of his father. Matters little now.

Her feet tap the metal floor beside him with a practiced elegance that for a moment, Giaus expects Estinien at his side, but when he turns it’s only Galatea. His gaze flickers to the heavy rise and fall of her chest. The Ruby Weapon had fallen with help of her allies, steadfast friends and Sapphire likewise with Cid’s contraption, but Emerald Weapon had been by her hand alone. 

They’re alone; he’s alone enough to murmur empty words, so it ends, only to bookmark the silence. Turning her head to face him, Galatea regards him with unfocused eyes, hair wild around her, a halo of spilled oil. 

His musings die under his tongue, recognition a swift knife between the ribs. Mayhaps due to the golden illusion below, Gaius finds himself in the Praetorium again as it burns, as they wait for the lift toward Ultima. He’d goaded her into answering for her beliefs, bringing down Eorzea to its pathetic reality, offering it to an individual that could bring it to heel. Eorzea’s champion was and is a credit to the savages that worshipped her alongside their gods, leashed as she was (is) to the whims of failing states. 

An invitation to not squander herself, and the moment it left his lips Gaius had known it was futile. 

Tis the same expression, now. 

Like a sharp exhale, Gaius returns to the present, but she remains a specter of his failures.

* * *

Everyone else carries the conversation or lack thereof as they leave the castrum, but Gaius always keeps Galatea at the corner of his eye.

His glance catches Allie once or twice. She cannot even march, shuffling as she hunches over stifled sobs. No words breach her tears so the group forms a loose circle around her with Severa leading and Valdeaulin at the rear. Galatea and Cid flank her right and Gaius the left. Little reason to do so now in a deserted castrum, but he won’t deny he prefers the safety of a well-worn formation.

Brushing her arm to get her attention, Cid's touch startles Galatea, snaps her back. Her hair pools on his shoulder as she leans down to hear him, a soft whisper to her ear. Cid has always been a gentle touch to what little he will attach to himself. Gaius cannot hear what they talk about, has no real curiosity for it, yet he catches the concern in Cid's posture. The warrior betrays little in her long gait, except tilting her head closer. When she casually slings her arm over his shoulders, he doesn't need to read lips to understand the gratitude.

Allie walks closer to Gaius, worse off than Eorzea's warrior, but he does not approach, does not console. His daughter, one of the few who yet live, would she scorn his touch? The answer sours his mouth for it will be no. She will accept it gladly for he is the father that has plucked her from the burning wreckage of Werlyt. Life changing, inspiring, but it has been merely padding out his collection of talent. 

Gaius simmers in silence, the injury given by the Ruby Weapon aching all the way to Terncliff.

* * *

The town welcomes them bathed in twilight. Gold floods the streets, paints the white buildings into warm yellows and long shadows. The Emerald Weapon conjured the same, only ash rained in the simulacra of invasion and conquest.

The group separates to their respective duties, though Gaius has none, with Allie taken to the inn to calm her nerves.He’s left to wander the plaza so he sits by the fountain, watching the sky darken, from freshly spilled blood to its congealed end.

He should speak with Allie, seek all the information they would need to stop the Weapon program, but his legs refuse his orders.

Milisandia, Ricon and now Rex.

Alfonse will be next.

As if to cement his fate, the Warrior of Light, the noose around his children’s necks, looms over him. Gaius thinks, distantly, that he should disdain her, curse her for her role. Instead, he looks on ahead, jaw set and eyes closed. Wordlessly, she sits next to him. The lack of both grimoire and lance doesn’t go unnoticed. 

Galatea grips her knees and bunches the dark fabric, leaving distended wrinkles. For lesser infractions, Gaius would’ve reprimanded his soldiers. Now, he shakes his head and waits for the day to end. 

The Warrior of Light waits for night as well.

* * *

“Why aren’t you with your daughter?” she scrapes out, voice mangled from her screams during the fight. Night settles like a mourning shroud and if not for the errant streetlights, they could’ve been swallowed in it. 

Gaius weighs the questions. There’s the practical answer, give her space to rest, but it’s not the truth is it? Not by curiosity does Galatea ask and the accusation need not be said. 

“I assumed you were resting like her,” he says, avoiding the question bluntly, “considering your battle with the Emerald Weapon.” A muscle twitches in her cheek, involuntary and telling. 

Shrugging, she leans forward, resting her palms on her knees. “I’m used to it by now.” The wind brushes her hair aside and Gaius sees the sleeplessness lining her eyes; he can sympathize. After shedding his armor out of necessity, the Ascians ruse laid at his feet with his defeat, insomnia follows like a persistent hound. The masks at his waist attest to its use. 

“The Praetorium came to mind,” he admits. Gaius taps the Black Wolf’s mask at his thigh. 

“All the Weapons have,” she says.

“Perhaps, yet--”

“It is the first I fight alone, aye. That isn’t lost on me.” Gaius glares at the interruption, but it slides off her. Twisting the braided band around her wrist, she frowns. “Exhausting as Ultima, at any rate,” she murmurs. 

“As I recall, you fought both the machina and I, too,” Gaius says. 

“Ah, well...” Her eyebrows scrunch together as she tries to remember. It’s an uncomfortably long pause. “You were only an obstacle in my path back then.” Her gaze pins him, but she’s not looking at him. Has she ever? 

He does not begrudge her simple take. Rex’s death is as much a stepping stone as an obstacle for Galatea. Gaius is no different. Alfonse will be no different.

The lack of malice smarts, nevertheless.

* * *

When the breeze turns sharp and his joints protest, they return to the inn together. The murmuring of people in their homes blend against the clack of their boots. Liberation must be hard to ease into, after twenty years of imperial presence. The streets remain empty from a curfew no longer upheld. Gaius wonders when will the citizens realize. 

The Warrior of Light hides her limp the same way he does, and so they march in stride. 

“You do not hate me, despite everything,” he says plainly. Neither indictment or comfot, but the truth as he has seen it. The statement startles her. 

“Should I?” Her words belly the curl of her lip. The passivity leaves, a fist curling at her side. “You don’t hate me for killing your children, either.” Ah, is that it? She sought him out for this?

“They chose to join the program willingly, misguided or not. The deaths of my wards are not by your hand alone,” Gaius says. 

“And if they are?” She flings it like mud, not caring if it hits the target or not. 

“If you are trying to make a point, speak frankly.” Her provocation aggravates rather than reaching its mark. The inn beckons a stone throw’s away, but they stop walking. Crossing his arms, he waits. 

Galatea laughs, ugly and sandpaper rough. “Do you mourn them, truly?” 

“Why do you care?” he asks. She steps into his space and for the first time, her eyes reach him, sickly yellow and full of disgust.

“Answer me.” 

“Would knowing I grieve for them ease your soul, warrior, or would it worsen its pain?” Once, he would’ve relished getting under her skin, from as petty a subject (despite the thrum beneath his ribcage). Allie weeps in her room, knowledgeable that she’ll be the only survivor. 

Emotion swims in Galatea’s face, but it never lands on a singular one.

“I shouldn’t even _care_ ,” and she’s tired; tired enough to admit it to Gaius, “but you care just as much as I should. Nothing. What weighs you down is personal failure, naught else.” 

“Is that what you think?” He smiles when he asks, not in defeat but in acknowledgement. The wind is a knife between them, so close it grazes the rise and fall of her chest. 

“I don’t know why I bother,” she mutters. “I already knew the answer and to think you would surprise me was folly.” 

The Warrior of Light leaves without fanfare, gaining nothing.

Gaius will rather endure a conversation with Galatea than see Allie; cannot bear the mirror she will be.

**Author's Note:**

> when werlyt gives me lemons, i make lemonade. i had brainworms and then this happened. It lines up closer to my semi interpretation of the questline which is why some tings might not line up (in terms of conversations and dialogues and scenes, etc). so yeah!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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